06 May 2012

MEXICO CITY -- If the long list of unsolved murders of journalists in Mexico offers any indication, there is little likelihood that justice will be reached in the weekend death of magazine reporter Regina Martinez.

Little chance of a credible arrest. Little chance of charges or a successful prosecution for her killer or killers.

The 49-year-old journalist was found dead in her home in the state of Veracruz on Saturday, beaten and strangled to death. She was a correspondent for the national investigative news magazine Proceso and based in Xalapa, the capital of a coastal state where violence and corresponding impunity are widespread.

A neighbor called police after noticing Martinez's front door was left open since morning. The day before, Martinez was reporting on municipal police officers arrested for alleged links to organized crime. Throughout her career, Martinez reported on organized crime and corruption, including a 2007 case of the rape and killing of a indigenous woman at the hands of Mexican soldiers.

Martinez, a native of the state she covered, is at least the fourth journalist killed in Veracruz since Gov. Javier Duarte took office in late 2010, reports have noted.

Last year, a newspaper columnist and his wife and son were shot to death during an ambush in their home. A woman covering crime in the port of Veracruz was found decapitated. And a rural Veracruz columnist was kidnapped in March and found dead in May.

All those cases remain unsolved, said Mike O'Connor, a representative in Mexico for the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which says that more than 40 journalists have been killed or have disappeared throughout the country since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006.

The Duarte administration said it was investigating Martinez's murder and formed a special commission Sunday that includes the participation of Proceso's founder, Julio Scherer. But "given the history, there's very little likelihood that there will be justice in this case," O'Connor said.

Already, Veracruz prosecutors said one line of investigation is that Martinez may have been killed in a robbery. Two cellphones, a laptop computer and plasma television screen were stolen, they said.

"That is how they are going to minimize the gravity of this murder," Jose Gil Olmos, a fellow reporter for Proceso, said in an interview on Monday. "It is a message of power and impunity. That is the lesson of this act."

Calls made to the Veracruz state government were not returned.

Nationally, efforts to protect news gatherers during 5-1/2 years of high drug violence have been feeble or ineffective. The post of special federal prosecutor to investigate crimes against "freedom of expression" was created in 2006. But it has mainly operated as a revolving door for bureaucrats, and closed no significant cases. The latest official tapped to head the post was appointed in February.

On Monday, as previously scheduled, the lower house of Congress unanimously passed legislation meant to further help protect reporters (link in Spanish). Martinez's killing was memorialized from the chamber's floor with a minute of silence. But press advocates, in exasperation, said the basic problem remains. Killers are rarely brought to justice.

"There is simulation by the state," said Antonio Martinez, spokesman for Articulo 19, a free-speech advocacy group. "We have more than enough mechanisms for protection. Nevertheless, they fail to attack the impunity."

04 May 2012

MEXICO CITY -- A gunman has shot and killed a retired Mexican army general at a garage in Mexico City, authorities said.

Gen. Mario Acosta Chaparro was accused in 2000 of ties to the Juarez drug cartel in northern Mexico, but later exonerated. A lone gunman shot him three times in the upper body late Friday afternoon at a garage in the Anahuac district, on Mexico City's central-west side, authorities said. Witnesses said the gunman then fled on a motorcycle, the Mexico City attorney general's office reported.

Acosta, 70, who survived a shooting attempt in 2010, is the second retired general to be assassinated in Mexico City in the last year.

In May 2011, retired Gen. Jorge Juarez Loera was shot in Ciudad Satelite, a northwest suburb. Theoutspoken general had overseen Joint Operation Chihuahua, a military-led campaign targeting drug traffickers in the northern border state of Chihuahua, where Ciudad Juarez, the violence-plagued base of the Juarez cartel, is located.

Acosta Chaparro was accused in 2000 of ties to the late Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who for years led the Juarez cartel. Acosta Chaparro was sentenced by a military tribunal in 2002 to a minimum of 15 years in prison for ties to drug traffickers. The federal attorney general's office exonerated him in 2007, and the general retired in 2008, reports said.

Mexico City Atty. Gen. Jesus Rodriguez Almeida told reporters Friday evening that authorities had not yet established a motive for the killing, and that his office would continue its investigation.

02 May 2012

MONTERREY -- Javier Guzman, a 25-year-old industrial engineer, eased his SUV toward the curb on a recent Sunday as a masked state police officer in the middle of the road signaled him to pull over.

Guzman rolled down his window, greeting the officer with a "Buenas tardes."

"Do you live here? Where are you coming from?" the officer asked.

"I live here, this car is mine," Guzman replied. He had nothing to hide, yet began coughing nervously.

The officer, dressed all in black, from combat boots to hooded ski mask, circled the vehicle. A long automatic assault rifle dangled at his side. After a few more questions, he let Guzman drive on.

Such checkpoints are now part of daily life in Monterrey, a metropolitan region of more than 4 million -- Mexico's wealthiest and third-largest city. The brief anxiety that these encounters produce in people is probably the least of residents' worries.

Monterrey, the sleek capital of Nuevo Leon state, is said to be in danger of "falling" to organized crime.

The city is beset by shootouts, armed robberies and "mass panic" incidents over any sign of danger.

More than 400 people have been killed in the state so far this year, compared with 315 in the same period in 2011, one local report said. Extortion by cartels or petty criminals is believed to be widespread. And, according to a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable from 2009, "all of the region's police forces are controlled by organized crime."

13 April 2012

Mexicans' trust in their military and national police has steadily declined since 2007, the first full year of President Felipe Calderon's war against drug cartels, a new Gallup poll says.

The poll released last week also finds that most Mexicans said they felt less safe walking alone at night in 2011 than they did in 2007.

The findings suggest that two key points of perception in Mexico's conflict -- safety and confidence in authorities -- have eroded since the start of the military-led campaign in late 2006.

In the poll, 56% of Mexicans said they didn't feel safe walking alone at night in their city or neighborhood in 2011, in contrast to 57% who said they felt safe walking alone at night in 2007.

The poll shows a steady decline of confidence in the military, from 64% in 2007 to 58% in 2011. Only 38% of respondents expressed confidence in the government in 2011, and 35% said they trusted the federal police, down significantly from 50% in 2007, Gallup reports.

allup said it has polled approximately 1,000 Mexican citizens 15 or older, in face-to-face interviews, starting in July 2007.

As Mexico's drug war nears the six-year mark, more than 50,000 people have been killed in related violence and thousands more are missing.

The Gallup poll measures public perceptions of safety and security institutions in Mexico through December. Recent data released by Mexico's national statistics institute, however, indicate that public safety perception has improved as recently as last month.

INEGI, as the institute is known by its Spanish acronym, said its Public Safety Perception Index rose 5.5 points in March 2012 from March 2011 (pdf link in Spanish). The index measures how safe Mexicans feel walking in the area where they live between 4 and 7 p.m.

Photo: Soldiers and federal police inspect a car that police said contains four human heads in the Pacific resort city of Acapulco on March 22. Violence continues in Acapulco as drug gangs battle for control of the region. Credit: Bernandino Hernandez / Associated Press

23 March 2012

From Wikileaks: "While there is public concern about the influence of the cartels, civil society is in general unaware of the degree to which the cartels have infiltrated key state and municipal institutions. All of the region's police forces are controlled by organized crime. In the case of San Pedro, the ABL cartel called the shots although a 15-person advance squad from la Familia was present in the city and trying to gain a foothold among the police force. (Separately, the former San Pedro Secretary of Public Security reports that La Familia has been engaged in such efforts intermittently since 2006.) As for the other police forces in the area, the Gulf Cartel was the true master. In general, and as was the case in San Pedro, the cartels did not attempt to bribe the municipal secretaries of public security, but bought off the number two and number three level officials on the force. Note: The mid-September detention by state law enforcement authorities of the Municipal Secretary for Public Security of Santiago (a Monterrey suburb) would represent an exception to this rule. End Note."

And all kinds of new Mexican acts — as varied as Juan Cirerol of Mexicali and cumbia-rockers Sonido San Francisco — showed that Mexico's independent music scene just might be at its most dynamic in years. Over 12 hours on Saturday, some 4,500 fans gathered to hear more than 50 international acts at a sonically diverse annual music festival called NRMAL.

The name belies the fact that nothing here can be taken for granted. Not only was it the biggest NRMAL fest held in the past three years, but the fact that it took place in this industrial city of more than 4 million without any serious trouble makes it even more of a triumph.

Metropolitan Monterrey is currently a battleground in Mexico's ongoing drug war, where a string of deadly tragedies such as the last August's Casino Royale massacre, in which 52 people died after drug traffickers torched a casino, have traumatized a once-proud hub of industry and innovation.

The storied Monterrey night life that was once centered around the Barrio Antiguo neighborhood is all but dead after a series of shootings with multiple fatalities at popular night spots. Many musicians who in previous years helped make Monterrey an incubator for new Latino sounds — groups such as Kinky or newer rockers She's a Tease — have migrated to safer centers such as Mexico City or to the United States.

"There was sadness, deception, uncertainty, a lack of will to get things done," said NRMAL organizer Pablo Martinez, speaking about the effects of violence on the Monterrey scene. "I think the fruits of staying standing through this year is this festival."

The outdoor fete, with bands spread over three stages all day long, was a stylish yet friendly event where security was casual and the boundary between the performing musicians and the fans was almost nonexistent.

"This is definitely a cutting-edge festival," said Travis Egedy of Denver punk-rave act Pictureplane as the afternoon got going. "The idea to have a cross-cultural music festival is really important and really cool, getting Americans to play down here for Mexicans."

That welcoming vibe was partly the product of a new spirit of collaboration brought by this year's NRMAL co-curator, Brooklyn DIY promoter Todd P.

In 2010, Todd P. organized a separate festival in Monterrey dubbed MTY MX, competing with the budding NRMAL crew and its first festival. That same year, an outbreak of drug-war violence in Monterrey resulted in many U.S. performers canceling their visits at the last minute. Both festivals struggled.

This year, Todd P. joined forces with NRMAL, setting aside the previous atmosphere of competition. He pumped a New York indie ethos into the lineup with acts he invited such as Prince Rama, Liturgy and Gatekeeper.

"The story line is: It's so bad, things are falling apart and it's chaos," Todd P. said. "I'm here, I'm looking around. It's not falling apart. This is a functioning country. It has problems but it's not the country portrayed in the news."

21 February 2012

A wealthy businessman surrendered this week to a municipal prison to face charges that he beat and violently berated an employee in his building for not obeying him.

The case of Miguel Sacal Smeke is the second scandal in recent months involving the release of video footage that captures what social-media users decried as acts of classist rage.

A judge denied bail for Sacal, a textile businessman.

He faces assault-with-injuries charges after a video emerged of him knocking out the teeth of a lobby employee in his upscale apartment building. The worker, Hugo Enrique Vega, had declined to fetch a car jack and change a tire for him.

In August, two women -- a beauty queen and a reality-television personality -- were filmed slapping and pushing a uniformed traffic officer on a swanky street in Mexico City's Polanco district over a parking dispute. The media dubbed them the "Ladies de Polanco."

Sacal's incident happened in July, before the "Ladies de Polanco" scandal, but the footage emerged on YouTube only in early January.

Disgust at the video of the two women spread for months in Mexico. Some said the "Ladies de Polanco" clip proved that race and class discrimination persist in Mexican society. Others said the video showed the lack of respect for uniformed authorities in Mexico, and the inability of authorities to enforce the law no matter anyone's class standing.

The "ladies," Azalia Ojeda and Vanesa Polo Cajica, still face charges for the August incident and had a court date on Wednesday in which they had their last interview with the judge. They are free on bail.

Sacal earned the nickname the "Gentleman de Las Lomas" (for the super-rich Las Lomas district) after the footage of his incident surfaced. In a television interview afterward, worker Vega was eloquent and even gracious when asked what he thought of Sacal's actions.

"I am not a businessman. I am simply a worker, I receive a salary, but at the end of the day, I offer services," Vega told Milenio TV. "We can't let ourselves be taken by the economic standing of each person. What's important here is to see us all as human beings."

From behind bars at the Reclusorio Oriente, a large city prison, Sacal apologized "to society" for attacking Vega, in a letter read by his lawyer Thursday. If convicted and sentenced, he faces between three and eight years in prison.

10 November 2011

* That was another phrase Ebrard used on foreign media on Tuesday regarding the violent and abiding failure that is Mexico's drug war. (Makes you wonder what those 44,000 dead are worth, doesn't it?)

Marcelo is of course a savvy and capable liberal politician, with a top-to-bottom successful term as mayor of one of the biggest and most complex megacities in the world. He's cut from the same cloth as other orthodox (or unorthodox) Latin American leftists who prove their presidential mettle by adequately running a chaotic megalopolis. (They find it hard to win, though.) His opinion on the matter of drug policy is news.

The fascinating part is watching Ebrard attempt to overcome those obvious barriers: the great wall of angry old AMLO, a national public that doesn't really know who he is, and a gringo power elite which likely looks upon him with a customary suspicion. Post below. And the poll results are supposed to come on Friday. ** Updated, Thursday, 11:56 a.m.

Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard says that if elected president he would remove his nation's military forces from the fight against violent drug cartels and seek a dialogue with policymakers in the United States over narcotics laws in both countries, which he called "schizophrenic."

"If the United States is legalizing marijuana and we're over here killing ourselves on the street over marijuana, that does not make sense," Ebrard said Tuesday, referring to U.S. states, such as California, that have sought to decriminalize the sale and use of cannabis.

In Mexico, Ebrard noted, drug consumption is legal in small amounts, while production and distribution is not.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in Mexico's drug war since the conservative President Felipe Calderon sent the armed forces to battle the cartels in late 2006. But his government, in 2009, also proposed the law decriminalizing drug use.

02 October 2011

Cool escalator structure connecting street-level with Refineria station on the deep deep deep Line 7 on Mexico City's mammoth metro. The atrium rises to a circular tube up top. There are staircases that hug the ring of the structure.

25 September 2011

** Originally published at World Now at the L.A. Times, the paper's new international news blog. My recent base at LAT.com, La Plaza, is hereby retired, but links remain live and available. Thanks for the follows and re-posts and continued tips and feedback.

REPORTING FROM MEXICO CITY -- A woman found decapitated in the border city of Nuevo Laredo is being mourned as an apparent member of a social networking site used by local residents to share information on drug cartel activity.

The victim was found early Saturday with a note nearby saying she was killed for posting messages online about violent or criminal incidents in Nuevo Laredo.

The Tamaulipas state attorney general's office identified the woman as Maria Elizabeth Macias Castro, 39, and said she was an editor at the newspaper Primera Hora (links in Spanish). The Associated Press, however, quoting an employee of the newspaper, identified the victim as Marisol Macias Castaneda, and said she held an administrative and not an editorial post at Primera Hora.

A web search of the newspaper's website found no mention of the woman's death or the discovery of a decapitated female body on Saturday.

But on the website Nuevo Laredo en Vivo, a banner image appeared memorializing a member known as NenaDLaredo. "You'll always be present," the display says.

22 September 2011

Here's the site for Estrella Cercana, our experimental newspaper underway now at kurimanzutto. At the site, the main editorial crew and I are posting images and links to stuff we're thinking about, talking about, laughing about, cringing at, all through the production process for the weekly periódico con fin de vida.

We'll also be posting the issue's content on the day we publish, planned now for Saturdays through Nov. 5, as well as .pdf files of how the paper looks in print once distributed here in Mexico City.

What is Estrella Cercana, you ask?

It's a publishing project built around Distant Star, the show currently up at kuri, inspired by the literature of Roberto Bolaño. (See Intersections posts on Bolaño from 2007 here and from 2009 here). We're building a weekly newspaper, primarily in Spanish, partly in spirit of the Infrarrealists, but sort-of-actually-really-not-all.

("I haven't even read 2666, and that's so infrarrealista!")

Our newsroom is roaming between the gallery space and various points in the city, and so far always jussied up with the proper editorial bottles and snacks. The first issue of EC drops this Saturday, Sept. 24, and we haven't quite yet figured out how we're going to get it into people's hands. But it's definitely coming. Each issue will feature a beautiful full-color visual piece as a centerfold, and will also come with a link to a special audio track from one of our many beat-oriented comrades and collaborators.

16 September 2011

That's an extremely low figure relative to Mexico's population and relative to an expectation that rises quietly every recent mid-September when Mexico celebrates its Independence Day. Inevitably, some people worry that a narco-terror attack will strike somewhere around the Grito like in 2008 in Michoacan. (See here.)

This week at La Plaza, I used the occasion to consider the implications for Mexico's current drug war and its future as a nation bound on democratic principles (supposedly) through the new Canana release "Miss Bala."

In fact, little is known about the owners and operators of the casino, despite initial reports (later contradicted) that said emergency exits in the establishment were blocked, contributing to the high death toll of 52. The dead included one pregnant woman, and over the weekend, as families buried their loved ones, another large demonstration against violence and insecurity took place in Monterrey (link in Spanish).

The demonstration ended in scuffles for some as activists made competing calls for the resignations of the Monterrey mayor, the Nuevo Leon state government, and President Felipe Calderon (video link in Spanish).

Nuevo Leon authorities said the investigation into the arson blaze is ongoing. On Monday, Gov. Rodrigo Medina announced the arrest of five men suspected of being involved in the attack. The suspects were identified as Zetas, the drug gang that is seeking control over Monterrey in a campaign that has spread fear and violence in the affluent industrial city.

Authorities said they were eager to speak with Raul Rocha Cantu, a Monterrey businessman identified as one of the owners of the casino. One newspaper said the casino owners had not complied with an extortion demand of 130,000 pesos a week, or about $10,000 -- common deals that often lead to brutal attacks against bars and other businesses in Monterrey.

In a series of interviews since Friday, the casino owners' lawyer, Juan Gomez Jayme, said attorney-client privilege would not permit him to divulge where Rocha was or whether he would present himself to Nuevo Leon authorities as they have requested (link in Spanish).

Gomez defended the establishment, saying the casino operated lawfully under municipal, state, and federal regulations. Yet questions were raised almost immediately about word of blocked emergency exits, which were reported by the chief of civil protection in Monterrey after firefighters put down the arson blaze.

In Tepic, Nayarit, gunmen burst into the Colonial Hotel in search of a group of people staying there; the majority of them managed to escape while one ran to the roof, and upon realizing he was surrounded, he threw himself into the void and died.

A local news source identifies the victim as a young man, and has photos. What image could this guy have had of his death had he been caught up by the assassins who were hunting him? What was going through his head?

In all, 46 people died in suspected drug-related violence in Mexico in 10 states on Friday, La Jornada reported. Just on Friday. And that's more or less a daily tally. Day after day, day after day, if you can make it through the daily carnage story back in the 12th or 13th page of the paper or whatever.

06 June 2011

A highly recommended read: "An American Gun in Mexico," Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2011. The pieces demonstrates the extraordinarily thin line that exists between gun smugglers, gun dealers, and federal gun agents, in the war in Mexico that has left an estimated 40,000 dead. More this week at La Plaza.

04 March 2011

The men lying under arrest in the photograph above are not dead, but, who knows, by now they could be. It's been three days since this post from Ciudad Juarez by journalist Diego Osorno has been published. In Juarez today, three days is plenty of time to possibly get killed.

Read this piece in Spanish by Froylan Enciso in a recent issue of Gatopardo. Up in a town in the Sierra Madre, up from Mazatlán, a drug-trade-related ambush during Christmas 2009 leaves at least 40 people dead, maybe up to 100, Enciso writes during a visit home.

The incident never makes it into the press. It didn't happen. I checked the federal government database on homicides this morning. For Mazatlán, only 97 homicides are reported in 2009. That doesn't sound right ...

They tell us lately "at least" 35,000 have been killed in Mexico's drug-trade violence since the governments ignited it on themselves in 2006. That can't be accurate. Just ask someone who knows better, ask Metinides. As Enciso illustrates, so many dead are not reported, so many kidnapped are never returned. We'll never know.

The "drug war" is a fiction. The violence it is inflicting on the people of Mexico is very real. It is crushing the country. I don't know about you, but I've been tired of it. Yet there's still no end in sight.

Violence stops by decriminalizing and demilitarizing the binational industry that pumps drugs into the United States. But don't expect Obama or Calderon to come to that conclusion in the blah-blah at the White House this week.

30 January 2011

My La Plaza post on Christmas Eve on photographer Enrique Metinides turned into a piece in the print paper, which ran today. (Somewhere. Couldn't find it anywhere on the main pages at LATimes.com.) Clip:

Even Metinides professes wonder at the ultra-violence of today's drug conflict. "There is just such a frightening quantity of dead, that they'll never find all the cadavers," Metinides said, fingering silicone albums filled with favorite snaps.

Then the retired journalist stops himself, arching an eyebrow. "But why even say it? What does that have to do with me?" he asks, then answers his own question. "Nothing."

Thanks to the editors in Foreign and Calendar for spotting the post and asking for a broader piece. Thanks to curator Veronique Ricardoni for connecting the interview. And thanks to photographer Eunice Adorno for sharing her portraits of Metinides with the paper.

25 December 2010

Above, a portrait of Enrique Metinides, the great D.F. photojournalist, taken in October 2010 by Eunice Adorno.

Metinides, now 76, is one-of-a-kind, an OG photojournalist whose work transcends the field and enters the realm of high art. In my view, he's among the best to have ever practiced the craft, taking more photos over many more years than, say, Robert Capa, Weegee, or Dorothea Lange.

Here's my end-of-the-year post at La Plaza, my interview with Metinides, marking the latest exhibit of his work in Mexico City. "In the Place of Coincidence," curated by longtime Metinides collaborator Veronique Ricardoni, is up at Garash until the end of January. The video and photo-montages mentioned in the piece display Metinides in new formats and through new perspectives; highly recommended.

"I'm a photographer by accident," Metinides said.

Back in his day, they called him "El Niño." The Kid, a name that followed him for years. Here are a few more portraits by Adorno, who is gracefully sharing them with Intersections. (Earlier this month, Eunice won the 2010 Fernando Benitez national cultural journalism prize in photojournalism, for her work on Mennonite women in north-central Mexico. See this slideshow at BBC Mundo.)

20 December 2010

Here's how we know the drug war isn't going well for the U.S. and Mexico governments: the catchy narcocorrido about life as a fun-loving cokehead. It's "El Cocaino," by Los Buitres de Culiacán. They work among many popular narcocorrido bands whose genre always implies a dance with death.

"El Cocaino" tells about not sleeping, partying with "the plebians," dealing with coke-itch, drinking Buchanan's, and not owing anyone any money. The verses all end with the line: "Soy cocaino no se los niego," or "I'm a cokehead and I won't deny it."

I don't keep steady track on this scene but, to those who might a bit more, what are the other new and good -- as in, outrageous or scandalous -- narcocorridos that you are especially fond of? Besides the goldenclassics, of course?

Looks like Los Buitres have a busy touring schedule across Mexico, too, hitting this month and into next year Michoacan, Mexico City, Oaxaca, Tijuana on the border, and on Dec. 22, a "private event" in Sonora.

06 December 2010

* A girl, 15, is arrested in Oakland on prostitution suspicions. By Brett Myers.

Oakland-based Youth Radio has an impressive two-part series up this week on teen prostitution, produced in partnership with "All Things Considered" on NPR and led by young reporter Denise Tejada.

Here's the Youth Radio link and here's the link as the story appears on NPR.

Tejada, in Part 1 of the series, talks two former teenage sex workers who were coerced or forced into hooking on the streets of Oakland. Their descriptions of their time under the control of pimps -- they have subcategories, apparently, such as "romeo pimp" and "guerrilla pimp" -- are pretty chilling.

One girl identified as Brittney explains how she entered the underworld. She was kidnapped when she was 15: "All I heard was, 'Man, go get that girl,' and one of them came out and dragged me by my hair and pulled me into the car."

She was then gang-raped.

Interviewed in the story, Alameda County District Atty. Sharmin Bock is up-front: "Remember Guyana and Jim Jones where everybody's drinking that Kool-Aid drink? Well, that's exactly what these girls have had. Let's call it pimp juice. They've all had it and they can't see past either their affection for him, or their fear for their trafficker."

Part 2 of the series, on how sex-trafficking has "gone global and more violent," airs Tuesday.

The Youth Radio page for the "Trafficked" series also includes essential web extras. The "Pimp Business Plan" is ... wow ("Make every hoe take a vow to hoeing."), and the Davey D audio essay on rap's connection to pimping and the "hustling" culture of Oakland is also good listening.

Addenda, on the media:

Denise Tejada, by the way, is the kind of natural new-generation journalist who should rightfully make old media models and old media institutions a bit nervous. I found a post with video where Tejada is first interviewed by NBC-Universal's mun2 then manages to turn the tables, getting an interview from her interviewers.

That's what's up Denise, and all young people of color; never permit yourself to be merely a subject. We all know how ugly that paradigm can get. So congratulations is due to the young journalists at Youth Radio, and all their supporters, for their strong work.

06 August 2010

Here's a read for your Sunday morning coffee. Bloomberg goes deep on cases of major U.S. or multinational banks all but knowingly allowing the laundering of Mexican narco money for years on end, and for millions upon millions of dollars in bloody profits. Here is the printable version of the piece (at 13 pages).

The Bloomberg story, by reporter Michael Smith, lays out how narco cartels regularly transfer millions in U.S. cash drug profits down into Mexico through transfers and small currency exchange transactions. They in turn use the money to fund their trafficking operations, including buying airplanes to shuttle cocaine up to the U.S. from South America.

The big banks, for the most part, turn a blind eye. Meanwhile, Mexican President Felipe Calderon this week signaled a willingness to "debate" legalization of drugs in Mexico. Between that, the money laundering, and the lack of a visible dent in the flow of the drugs to the U.S. ... Makes you wonder if all those tens of thousands of deaths so far are in vain, don't it?

01 August 2010

Above, what women "sleepwalking" through life in Ciudad Juarez really dress like. The image is from "Las Otras Batallas," a photo exhibit currently showing in Juarez, and these women's garments look nothing like the dresses that the city supposedly inspired in the upcoming fall/winter line by the Rodarte house. Read more in my post at La Plaza here.

A couple of troubling things linger about this story. MAC Cosmetics has apologized for the Rodarte line's accompanying limited edition make-up collection, the one with names like "Factory" and "Ghosttown," but there's been no word or response on the matter as far as I've seen from the Mulleavy sisters directly, besides a cursory statement within the MAC statement.

The clothes are apparently still heading to racks or boutiques or showrooms in the fall. I wonder, how many women in Juarez will die violently between now and then?

In the New Yorker profile on the sisters earlier this year, Kate said: "We want to make people think, and, once you decide to do that, you will have people that won't like what you're doing."

13 July 2010

In the latest installment in a periodic series, I hustle my posting at the L.A. Times La Plaza blog. Below, recent news and notes from across Latin America, with an inevitable leaning on Mexico, per our location, and a focus on the work of LAT correspondents, per the paycheck.

I've also had two stories recently in The Times. Nice to have a byline in there again. Those links hang down after the posts noted below (and I'm only going back to early June with the posts; this is making my head heart):

30 June 2010

The culture supplement Tomo has just put out its Postopolis issue. Flip through the pages here. It's a useful marker to publish my final Postopolis report, so here it goes. Sorry for the delay ...

By Saturday, Postopolis had spread, like a Red Specter contagion. People in D.F. were hearing about it, tuning in and watching the stream online, and arriving to hear the talks live. The faces of my fellow bloggers were becoming not just familiar but welcoming. And those arty concrete ladrillos were by then all-too familiar with our poor sore nalgas.

On the final day David Lida came to discuss his book "First Stop in the New World" with Jace Clayton. A
couple
questions centered on Lida's thesis in the book that Mexico is "the capital of
the Twenty First Century." He reiterated that his argument is based on the idea
that the
fastest growing cities in the developing world are growing like Mexico
City did, which makes D.F. sort of the mother figure to places like Lagos or
Mumbai. People for the most part make their life here day-to-day, Lida said, like in so many other such cities.

In a question,Mariana
Delgado of Proyecto
Sonidero challenged the notion that Mexico City is
post-Colonial
or post-Hispanic. She said something to the effect of, 'This is still
Tenochtitlán.' The exchange was so cool because it demonstrated that
this
question -– Is Tenochtitlán a ghost city or the city around us, actually? –-
is
still a relevant one in D.F. today, in the year 2010.

19 May 2010

Here's a recent post at La Plaza, the L.A. Times Latin America news blog, on the disappearance of one of the most powerful men in Mexico, Diego Fernandez de Ceballos. The former presidential candidate for the PAN went missing on Friday night on his ranch in Querétaro.

Five days later, pretty much the entire security and law enforcement apparatus of the center of the country has been mobilized to find him, but still no sign of the man they call Jefe Diego. Tracy Wilkinson updates the story today: "Fernandez de Cevallos was more feared than beloved, and if he was the
victim of kidnapping, as the evidence suggests, the list of suspects is a
long one."

27 April 2010

Click to get a larger view of the above strip, an installment of "El Ñacas y El Tlacuachi," by a cartoonist known as Bobadilla, who is based in the cartel citadel city of Culiacán, Sinaloa.

In this strip, which appears in the tough Culiacán newspaper Ríodoce, a young "emo" asks the two narco hitmen characters to do him the favor of killing him. The hitmen remind him that assassinations are a "business," meaning costly, which depresses the emo even further. Generously, the hitmen suggest the emo step into the cross-fire of their next gun battle. The emo complies, but miraculously survives the bullets. The following day, the corrupt papers proclaim the capture of a major narco figure: El Emo.

Planet magazine has an engaging interview with Bobadilla, and more examples of his strip. "El Ñacas y El Tlacuachi" originated in the Culiacán magazine La Locha. There are more here.

31 March 2010

Monterrey -- and all of Mexico's northeast, really -- is a war zone right now. The Zetas and the Gulf cartel are hashing out their historic break-up in the only way that a Mexican drug-smuggling organization knows how, by brutally killing as many members of the enemy as possible, and by terrorizing everyone else.

Why? The Zetas are desperate to retain control of the lucrative drug market in Monterrey. If you don't buy from them, they seem to be saying, you won't buy from no one. An excerpt:

When the thugs had all the ravers assembled into a flock, the little
bastards proceeded to rob everyone. Going person to person, they took
cell phones, cameras, jewelry, cash, and anything else shiny that got
their attention. They were like little ravens with automatic
weapons. They even stole the DJ's passport and credit cards. Fuck, they
even took his headphones.

But that was all just collateral. The main purpose of their visit
were the drugs. With flashlights in hand, they scouted the floor for
baggies of weed, pills, LSD, coke, anything ... They must have felt like
they were on an Easter egg hunt.

The leader then addressed the people: "Raise your hand if you like
weed," he asked the crowd. But nobody raised a hand or so much as moved.
They were too scared. So he repeated his question, this time while
firing a quick burst from his R-15 into the air. "I said who likes
fucking weed?!!" Naturally, a lot of hands went up.

The entire piece is worth the read, even if you're a bit more on the skeptical side and don't fully buy that this pseudonymous writer is telling the pure truth. He suggests toward the end that the Zetas' hold on Monterrey may be close to running its course.

16 March 2010

Narco-related violence in Mexico is dominating the news once more. Three people with ties to the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juarez were killed on Saturday. At least thirteen were killed over the weekend in Acapulco. And with scores dead in recent weeks, Reynosa is on fire due an apparent split between the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas. Things are so bad there, journalists are going missing, or just turning away from the story.

Getting a sense of what things like are like on the ground is becoming harder and harder. But there are some voices coming through.

If you can muster checking in on reality, the blog Ontobelli meticulously accounts for narco-related gun battles across the country, mostly via amateur YouTube clips. Many if not most of these battles go unreported in the mainstream press. The blog's author offers this narrated video explaining the background on the current outbreak of violence in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, and all of Mexico's northeast.

For an achingly frank ex-pat account of the situation in Reynosa, check out the blog Gringa-N-Mexico, by a young woman named Lindy -- "born and raised in southern Michigan, just a little country gal" -- who followed her husband to Mexico after he was deported. In a Feb. 24 post, Lindy writes about how completely the Gulf Cartel controls the streets of her adopted city:

I guess the cartel wanted to make the citizens of the city
feel better so a few days ago they made a gigantic banner and hung it
from an
overpass near where we live. It read something along the lines of -
Citizens of
Reynosa, you are safe. We the cartel so-and-so are here to do our job
and we do
not wish to harm any people of your city, we only want to do what we
have to do
and not hurt any civilians. ... How nice of them?

The kicker is when she realizes the meaning behind the acronym "C.D.G." that she spots on some police-looking vehicles.

* UPDATE: Looks like the post has been taken down. Too bad, but not unexpected. Suerte, Lindy.

** INTERESTINGLY: In the case of the consular official in Juarez who was killed along with her husband near the border with El Paso, the local NBC affiliate across the border notes that whatever the victim Lesley (or Leslie) Enriquez did exactly at the consulate has not been specified.

Robert Cason, victim Arthur Redelfs's stepfather, also told KTSM he did not know what his step-daughter-in-law did at the consulate. Meanwhile, Diana Washington Valdez in the El Paso Times quotes a former DEA agent who says he knew Redelfs, a local Sheriff's Office detention officer, "since 1990."

Speaking to The Takeaway, expert narco reporter Ioan Grillo says the Enriquez-Redelfs slaying appeared to be a "very organized hit."

However, unnamed sources in the State Department led The Washington Post to conclude that it "did not appear that the slain consular employee was involved in
counternarcotics work."

Officials are saying now that it looks like a case of mistaken identity.

04 March 2010

Above, a photo by L.A. Times staffer Michael Robinson Chavez from the quake devastation in Constitucion, central Chile. Help is finally arriving to the region. Here, my L.A. Times piece on social disparities evident in the aftermath of the quake in Chile's highly developed capital, Santiago.

19 February 2010

Well, more like critiquing the critique coverage of Mexico's narco war, itself a subset of media writing these days. Here's what I mean.

I recently came across a piece from last fall that somehow fell through the cracks of my feeds as I was completing the main work on my book manuscript. It's Michael Massing in the Columbia Journalism Review, bemoaning what he calls the slanted coverage of Mexico by U.S. correspondents who he says are hellbent on portraying this country as falling apart in an orgy of narco-related bloodshed. An excerpt:

At the bottom of the piece, there are several head-nodding 'right on!' comments from current or former American residents in Mexico, who are very often far more reflexively defensive of all things Mexico than the typical Mexican native. But the piece's flaw is its inability to readily admit that the narco violence in Mexico -- more than 16,000 dead in three years -- is a serious, serious problem, no matter how you slice it. And the Mexican government, no matter what Felipe Calderon says, keeps failing, and failing, and failing, in its efforts to stop it.

I take his critique one step further. Using key examples from the sudden surge in "spill over"-themed coverage of Mexico in the U.S., which I'd date around spring 2009, I point out the gaping hole in the narco war reporting. Mainly, that official corruption in cartel-like organization patterns is by necessity present within the United States, but we rarely ever hear about it in U.S. papers (except when someone gets caught).

An excerpt:

The term treats Mexico's violence as a kind of "contagion," as one of many critical reader comments noted of the March 23 New York Times
article. "Fact is, the drug trade is a transnational commodity chain
that links consumers [in] the U.S. with a pyramid of distributors,
processors, financiers and growers. In that sense, the violence is a
product of the trade itself, not a disease vector from Mexico," wrote a
Times reader identified as Heather
Williams of Durham, N.C. "Do we really think that all the people
profiting from this trade are colorful (and brown) cartel leaders
walking around with TEC-9 pistols in their coats? Give me a break. You
can't move that kind of cash without bankers, real estate agents,
trucking firms, lawyers, bureaucrats, cops, border patrol agents, etc.
helping out at every stage of the game."

Where does this leave us? What should we read about Mexico's drug war, and how? I like Gancho, for starters, when Corcoran posts on narco stuff. You can also check out other Mexico-related links on the right, some in Spanish.

For now, however, these are questions that I'm going to have to table on Intersections, as I'm no longer a free agent. I'll be starting a new job soon, back in the media machine.